The other Spectator 'over there'

I have been a fan of The American Spectator for many years, indeed, back in the pre-internet age I used to be a subscriber and my admiration for Emmett Tyrrell, Jnr, the magazine's founder and former editor remains very high.  Similarly, as regular readers will know, I admire Glenn Beck, although not without qualification.  I was cynically amused at his stunt last weekend when he nicked Martin Luther King (MLK) from under the noses of revolutionary progressives like 'The Reverend' Al Sharpton and held a huge rally in his iconic name urging America to return to old values which, he would have us believe, MLK espoused.  I should add that my cynicism does not extend to doubting Beck's good faith, I do not know the man well enough to do that and so I take him on face value and, by and large, what I see I like.  I very nearly stood up and applauded when he told us via his TV show that he had recruited MLK's niece to stand on the platform with him, thus decapitating much of the Left-wing attack.  Brilliant tactics!

However, I had one or two tiny doubts about his claims that MLK was only concerned with establishing, once and for all, the admirable principle that all Americans should be equal before the law.  Unfortunately, again, my shameful ignorance stopped me from expressing my doubts, despite my having lived through MLK's campaign, because I did not have the facts to hand.  Also, as others in the comments to a recent post of mine emphasised in respect of exactly why some colonialists rebelled against the Brits, once myths are established, American or British, it is incredibly difficult to winkle out historical truth.

Happily, Matt Purple in The American Spectator has had a go with respect to MLK.  He maintains that whilst MLK began his journey to right a great wrong with one aim, towards the end he had moved his sights onto another target, economic equality as well as civic equality.  If true that puts MLK, metaphorically speaking, into Al Sharpton's rally rather than Glenn Beck's.  None of it, of course, detracts from his status as a great leader, one of those rare men who moved an entire society into a different direction and who did so with recourse to violence or Congressional diktat.  I can't help wondering if Glenn Beck will ever earn a similar reputation as he fights back against American progressivism.  Anyway, it is an interesting article and well worth reading.

 

Comments

[JK]

I can only report what I've seen (read) concerning the resemblance between MLK's mythic rally and Glen Beck's. the more waggish, oddly enough on both sides of the partisan divide, have picked up on the phrase:

"I have a dream."

And turned it round to:

"I have a scheme."

Whether or not that's true I do have to wonder - if true - might that mean fellow Fox employee Sarah Palin is in on it?

[David Duff]

Well, 'JK', here you slide onto slippery ice. Undoubtedly the Beck rally had political overtones despite his every effort to insist that it was entirely to do with American social values but, to paraphrase, 'methinks he doth protest too much' especially given that MDS (er, My Darling Sarah) was there to add her lustre to the cluster! However, that does not invalidate Beck's sincerity. He obviously believes, in the Biblical as well as the political sense. As a deeply avowed and fundamentalist agnostic myself, I find all Beck's religiosity irritating but it is not, I suspect, going to do him, and MDS, any harm - in America, at any rate.